UK Lifestyle blog

What Goes into the Making of Excellent Customer Service?

As unfortunate as it may be that it’s not the other way around, these days when you’re the recipient of some exceptionally good service it comes as quite the surprise. Most of the service providers we look to for the services we need as well as the retailers of the consumer goods we need operate from a position of power, where they can pretty much dictate to the buyer how the relationship is going to play out, simply because they know that we don’t quite have that much in the way of alternatives.

If bread is cheaper somewhere else for example, it isn’t that much cheaper than what you’d get it for at the corner shop owned by the grumpy old man who after all these years of having you buying bread from him still somehow looks at you like you’re going to steal something. That scenario is but just a storm in a tea cup if you compare it to some of those crucial and even critical products and services we may require.

I mean if you get bad service at a particular restaurant, you can always put up a review about it online and resolve never to return to that specific restaurant, can’t you? If a specific fast food franchise starts to show signs of selling food which appears to be a little dated, you can always report that specific franchisee to their franchisor, can’t you?

However, if you’re critically ill and the personnel at the nearest hospital you’re taken to treats you like nothing more than a commodity, at that specific time during which you need emergency medical care, you don’t quite have much by way of choice, do you? The same applies to something like finding yourself in trouble with the law – if you’re in a sticky situation legally and you need to find a lawyer to help you out fast, you’ll pretty much be resigned to having to pay whatever it is they quote you.

So going back to the question of what constitutes great service, it’s simply a matter of the fundamental reason behind the founding of the institution offering that service. Is this easy to gauge? Not at all – it’s in actual fact extremely difficult, however there are some very good examples of how the mission and vision of a group of individuals coming together to offer a service, can actually provide excellent service as a result of their original mission and vision.

The likes of Groth & Associates makes for one such example, testimony to which observation is the manner in which they handle their affairs. I mean why on earth would a legal expert such as this offer free consultations if it wasn’t their ultimate mission to simply help those people who need it most? If it were a different legal firm which was just in it for the money, getting by on furnishing their clients with the bare basics of what they’re obliged to, they would be charging hefty consultation fees no matter the final outcome of the cases they’d be taking on.